Epitaphs for the Obama presidency (1)

Things are falling apart for Obama so fast (“freakout” is the current term showing up in even liberal outlets) that the measure of his presidency is already being taken. Bret Stephens, writing in the Wall Street Journal, has a particularly pungent and insightful column full of near-aphorisms on the president and the media forces which sustain him with decreasing effectiveness. A sample:

A cavalier foreign policy by an inattentive president that elicits the contempt of the people it intends to punish ultimately encourages their aggression as well.

…We need a fat president. Or at least one who rarely thinks and never speaks about how he looks in jeans. And one who doesn't spend his day testing his wits against a Hollywood stoner or bantering with Ryan Seacrest while a European ally is being pummeled by Russia. And one who would rather spend his time working than working out, even if it means putting on a few pounds. And one who can pitch from the mound and reach home plate. However confined.

Via: American Thinker
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Brad Blakeman: Ceding Control of Internet ‘Part of President’s Strategy of Appeasement & Pandering’

The U.S. government plans to open up the body that manages Internet names and addresses to the global Internet community.

This would mean giving up control of a system developed in the U.S.

Brad Blakeman, former deputy assistant to President George W. Bush, explained the plan to Harris Faulkner on “Fox Report.” He said the Department of Commerce currently keeps track of and doles out all domains and IP addresses. Now, the Obama administration wants to cede that authority to an international body.

“I think it’s part of the president’s strategy of appeasement and pandering,” Blakeman said.

According to Blakeman, the move could raise access fees for domains and IP addresses.

“We should control it. We made it, we paid for it, it’s ours,” he said.

Via: Fox Insider

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L.A. earthquake: Shaking, jolted nerves reported across wide area

A 4.4-magnitude earthquake that struck near Westwood provided an early morning jolt for the greater Los Angeles area, but there were no immediate reports of damage or injuries.

The quake struck at 6:25 a.m. at a depth of 5.3 miles, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The quake was centered two miles north of Sherman Oaks, not far from the intersection of Mulholland Drive and the 405 Freeway.

A shallow magnitude 2.7 earthquake followed up at 7:23 a.m. four miles from Westwood, according to the USGS. That quake was reported at a depth of 4.3 miles. 

The Los Angeles Fire Department was in "earthquake emergency mode" as crews surveyed the city by air and on the ground, but public safety officials across the region said there did not appear to be any significant damage.

“We did our initial survey and it was felt only. No reports of any damage,” said County Fire Supervisor Michael Pittman.

FULL COVERAGE: Southern California earthquakes

Joe Ramallo of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power said that as of 6:45 a.m. there were no reports of water main breaks or power outages immediately following the earthquake. But he said crews are conducting routine safety checks after the quake to ensure their durability.

Metro light rail service, meanwhile, had resumed normal service shortly after 7 a.m. after a system-wide inspection found no damage.

Stacey Dirks, the 25-year-old assistant manager at Noah’s New York Bagels in Westwood, was at work at the time and said “it just felt like a sudden shake, it was just like rapid and quick.”

No bagels fell off the shelves and “everything stayed in place,” Dirks said.

Via: LA Times
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Why Liberals Can’t Govern

Back in late February, a new contract document revealed that the Department of Health and Human Services would be paying $60 million for the computer cloud that supports back-end data sharing for HealthCare.gov and state Obamacare marketplaces, more than five times the amount in the original contract. This week HHS revealed that the contract has been further revised — to roughly $120 million, now more than ten times the original $11 million value of the contract when Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services first awarded it in 2011.

In most professions, when you end up spending ten times what you budgeted, the consequences are swift and severe. Heads roll. Responsibilities are reassigned. Budgetary authority gets yanked. This, of course, is not how things work in the federal government.

When George W. Bush was in the Oval Office, liberals often argued that conservative wariness and distrust of government made them poor managers of it. Because they didn’t believe in the power and benefits of an active, powerful federal bureaucracy, they tolerated and came to expect waste and mismanagement.

Alan Wolfe articulated this idea in the Washington Monthly in 2006. “Unable to shrink government but unwilling to improve it, conservatives attempt to split the difference,” he wrote, “expanding government for political gain, but always in ways that validate their disregard for the very thing they are expanding. The end result is not just bigger government, but more incompetent government. . . . As a way of governing, conservatism is another name for disaster.” His article was entitled simply “Why Conservatives Can’t Govern.”

Via: NRO

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CA Republicans Seek Return to Reagan Blue

At this weekend’s state party convention at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco Airport, a group of influential California Republicans has an odd request for delegates: help turn California blue. 

“Around the globe, blue is identified with conservative, free market parties, while red is identified with social democratic parties,” points out Shawn Steel, a former chairman of the state party who now serves as its representative on the Republican National Committee. “It is why conservative-leaning Democrats in Congress were called ‘Blue Dogs.’ Everyone knew what it meant.”

Steel is among a group of Republicans that have introduced a resolution calling for the California Republican Party to adopt blue as its official color in branding materials. The informal coalition of “Republicans, Red No More” says that it’s time to conform to proper historical and international standards for political ideology, correct a 14-year-old mistake by the mainstream media and, in the process, confront “the idea of a hopelessly divided nation.”

The group has some high-profile backers, including two members of California’s congressional delegation.

“Should the Republican Party choose its own principles and symbols, or should we let the national media do that for us?” asked Rep. Doug La Malfa, R- Richvale, in an email to delegates. “Well, the answer should be obvious.”

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Huntington Beach, pleads, “Will you join with me in taking back our Reagan Blue?” He was a speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan.

No Red States and Blue States

Think the whole color conundrum is trivial? Wayne Johnson, one of the state’s most successful political consultants, believes that the media’s emphasis on red states vs. blue states increases public cynicism about the political process.

Via: California Political Review

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Obama: Health Insurance Isn't Expensive - Just Cancel Your Cable and Phones!

This is a few days old, but it’s amusing nonetheless. Barack Obama appeared in a town hall for Spanish-language media on March 6th to discuss ObamaCare and promote enrollments, and got challenged by a viewer on the economics of it for low-income Americans who are now forced to buy comprehensive health insurance. On a $36,000 annual income, the requirement to buy the broad policy rather than something a little more economical — say, hospitalization coverage combined with an HSA, a strategy which is now all but illegal — makes it impossible to comply. Pshaw, Obama replied. Why, all those low-income folks need to do is stop spending money on luxuries like cable television and cell phones!

The President responded that “if you looked at their cable bill, their telephone, their cell phone bill… it may turn out that, it’s just they haven’t prioritized health care.” He added that if a family member gets sick, the father “will wish he had paid that $300 a month.”

The Libre Initiative points out that premiums have skyrocketed, thanks to the forced changes in ObamaCare, along with the mandate for comprehensive coverage:

According to the National Center for Public Policy Research, the health care law is reducing choice and increasing premiums for millions of Americans. Ehealthinsurance reports that consumers are paying an average of 39% more than they did before the law was implemented. The high cost of policies is contributing to the continued weak enrollment numbers under the law, which are now showing signs of decreasing with less than 3 weeks left to enroll. When he sought the Presidency, Mr. Obama said his plan would deliver affordable care that people would be “desperate” to purchase.

Daniel Garza, Executive Director of The LIBRE Initiative released the following statement:

“If the President actually believes that a family earning less than $40,000 per year can afford nearly $4,000 in health insurance premiums, then he truly does not understand middle-income families. Americans do not need the President to tell them how to budget their households. People are already cutting back on things like cable television and cell phones, just to compensate for an awful economy.This President promised he would deliver on affordable health care. Instead, premiums are up, out-of-pocket expenses are up, and overall cost of living is up. The President simply doesn’t get it. And his condescending attitude adds insult to injury.”

Let’s take a look at that $300 a month, too. Assuming that we’re talking about a family of four, that would force the family to spend $3,600 a year. While that might be money well spent in the case of catastrophe, it’s a bad investment on several levels otherwise. If both kids break a bone, it might run them $500 each to get treated, or perhaps even a thousand each if they go to an emergency room. If they get the flu, perhaps another $200 each for a doctor visit. Throw in wellness checks for everyone at $250 each, and we’re talking about $3400 in medical care, $200 less than their premiums.

But wait! In most plans of that cost, the family will have to spend thousands of dollars in deductibles first for everything but the wellness checks — so the only benefit will be covering the $1000 those cost. In this example, the family that normally would have spent $3400 out of pocket in that year will now spend $5,800.

That’s why families such as the caller’s used HSAs to spend pre-tax money on routine care and smaller emergencies, and chose so-called catastrophic insurance to deal with serious issues requiring hospitalizations. They could do that and still afford to have a phone and cable TV, at least until Barack Obama assumed he could prioritize their budgets better than they could.

Via: Hot Air

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[CARTOON] The Democrats’ Hot Air

Via: California Political Review

ObamaCare's Secret Mandate Exemption - HHS quietly repeals the individual purchase rule for two more years.

ObamaCare's implementers continue to roam the battlefield and shoot their own wounded, and the latest casualty is the core of the Affordable Care Act—the individual mandate. To wit, last week the Administration quietly excused millions of people from the requirement to purchase health insurance or else pay a tax penalty.

This latest political reconstruction has received zero media notice, and the Health and Human Services Department didn't think the details were worth discussing in a conference call, press materials or fact sheet. Instead, the mandate suspension was buried in an unrelated rule that was meant to preserve some health plans that don't comply withObamaCare benefit and redistribution mandates. Our sources only noticed the change this week.

That seven-page technical bulletin includes a paragraph and footnote that casually mention that a rule in a separate December 2013 bulletin would be extended for two more years, until 2016. Lo and behold, it turns out this second rule, which was supposed to last for only a year, allows Americans whose coverage was cancelled to opt out of the mandate altogether.

In 2013, HHS decided that ObamaCare's wave of policy terminations qualified as a "hardship" that entitled people to a special type of coverage designed for people under age 30 or a mandate exemption. HHS originally defined and reserved hardship exemptions for the truly down and out such as battered women, the evicted and bankrupts

Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

But amid the post-rollout political backlash, last week the agency created a new category: Now all you need to do is fill out a form attesting that your plan was cancelled and that you "believe that the plan options available in the [ObamaCare] Marketplace in your area are more expensive than your cancelled health insurance policy" or "you consider other available policies unaffordable."

This lax standard—no formula or hard test beyond a person's belief—at least ostensibly requires proof such as an insurer termination notice. But people can also qualify for hardships for the unspecified nonreason that "you experienced another hardship in obtaining health insurance," which only requires "documentation if possible." And yet another waiver is available to those who say they are merely unable to afford coverage, regardless of their prior insurance. In a word, these shifting legal benchmarks offer an exemption to everyone who conceivably wants one.

Via: WSJ

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Fourteen of America’s 25 Biggest Campaign Donors Are Unions

Yesterday, Senate majority leader Harry Reid went on a rant on the Senate floor about the Koch brothers. Reid seems to believe that the fraternal billionaires are buying America with their campaign contributions, saying “whoever has the most money gets the most free speech” — implying, I suppose, that Charles and David Koch, as some of the richest men in the world, control the most political speech. However, as the Washington Examiner’s Mark Tapscott noted a few weeks ago, the biggest donors in America may not be what you’d expect.

I reproduced this chart that shows the top 25 donors to political campaigns between 1989 and 2014, according to the Center for Responsive Politics:

Mr. Reid may be interested to know the following:

• The top campaign donor of the last 25 years is ActBlue, an online political-action committee dedicated to raising funds for Democrats. ActBlue’s political contributions, which total close to $100 million, are even more impressive when one realizes that it was only launched in 2004. That’s $100 million in ten years.
• Fourteen labor unions were among the top 25 political campaign contributors.
• Three public-sector unions were among the 14 labor groups: the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees; the National Education Association; and the American Federation of Teachers. Their combined contributions amount to $150 million, or 15 percent of the top 25’s approximately $1 billion in donations since 1989.
• Public- and private-sector unions contributed 55.6 percent — $552 million — of the top 25’s contributions.
• Large private companies contributed $441 million in campaign contributions. Among them were banks and insurance firms such as JPMorgan Chase, trade associations such as the National Association of Realtors and the American Medical Association, and technology and telecommunications companies such as AT&T and Microsoft.

Via: NRO

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Issa, Cummings clash at hearing after ex-IRS official Lerner takes 5th

A House hearing on the IRS targeting scandal rapidly broke down into a heated and deeply personal argument between a top Democrat and Republican, moments after former IRS official Lois Lerner once again invoked her Fifth Amendment right not to testify. 

Lerner, who last year refused to answer questions about her role in singling out Tea Party and other conservative groups for extra scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status, was called back before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Wednesday. Though Republicans argue she waived her Fifth Amendment right by giving a statement during the last hearing, Lerner continued to invoke that right on Wednesday. 

"On the advice of my counsel, I respectfully exercise my Fifth Amendment right and decline to answer that question," she said in response to several questions. 

But ranking Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., got into a heated argument with Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., after Issa tried to adjourn the hearing. 

Issa at first stood up and prepared to leave as Cummings said he wanted to ask a "procedural question." In seconds, tensions flared. 

"Mr. Chairman, you cannot run a committee like this," Cummings appealed. 

Cummings' microphone was then turned off, and then flipped back on again. Issa sat down momentarily, but then abruptly told Lerner she was "released" and said: "We're adjourned, close it down."

Via: Fox News

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History not on Democrats’ side in this mid-term election

Democrats in Missouri and Kansas have great hopes of picking up seats in this year’s mid-term elections.

     

The chart says it all

Read But history suggests otherwise, and it suggests that in unmistakable terms.

In fact, Tim Storey, a political expert for the National Conference of State Legislatures says this:

“Since 1902, the party in the White House lost seats in legislatures in 26 of the 28 mid-term elections. The only exceptions being in 1934 when Democrats gained 1108 seats and in 2002 when Republicans netted 177 seats in the post 9/11 election.”

Click on the link for a chart that lays it all out. But Democrats, be forewarned: It’ll depress you.

Via: Kansas City Star

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Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2014/02/26/4849015/history-not-on-democrats-side.html#storylink=cpy

     

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2014/02/26/4849015/history-not-on-democrats-side.html#storylink=cpy

EPA starts process that could restrict Pebble Mine

JUNEAU, Alaska — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced it is taking the first steps toward restricting or even prohibiting development of a massive gold-and-copper prospect near the headwaters of a premier sockeye salmon fishery in southwest Alaska — though no final decision has been made.

While the rarely used EPA process is underway, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers cannot approve a permit for the proposed Pebble Mine project.

The announcement Friday follows release of an EPA report in January that found large-scale mining in the Bristol Bay watershed posed significant risk to salmon and could adversely affect Alaska Natives in the region, whose culture is built around salmon.

EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy made clear Friday that no final decisions have been made. While McCarthy said scientific and other data has provided “ample reason” for EPA to believe a mine of the size and scope of Pebble “would have significant and irreversible negative impacts on the Bristol Bay watershed and its salmon-bearing waters,” she said EPA is open to receiving more information.

Mine opponents have been urging EPA to take steps to protect the region and hailed Friday’s announcement as significant. Supporters of Pebble Mine fear that EPA will move to block the project even before it gets to the permitting phase.

Tom Collier, CEO of the Pebble Limited Partnership, which is working to advance the mine project, called the EPA process a “major overreach.” In a statement, Collier said EPA’s actions to date “have gone well outside of its normal practice, have been biased throughout, and have been unduly influenced by environmental advocacy organizations.”

Via: Washington Post

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Is Common Core the One Policy the Public Won’t Let Obama Administration Get Away With?

Some conservatives might get frustrated with the lack of public outrage over the Obama administration’s executive overreach, but there has been no apathy when it comes to pushing a federal takeover of education, conservative icon Phyllis Schlafly wrote.

Karima Hawkins of Jackson, foreground, holds a sign against Common Core, the State Standards Initiative that established a single set of educational standards for kindergarten through 12th grade in English language arts and mathematics, at the Capitol in Jackson, Miss., Tuesday, Jan. 7, 2014. Opponents of Common Core hope to convince legislators into ending the initiative. Lawmakers return to the Capitol for a three-month session this year. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis) AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis

“Many people said ho-hum when President Barack Obama threatened to change any law with his pen or phone, and even use that power to personally alter Obamacare and the welfare law, and to ‘legislate’ the Dream Act that Congress refused to pass,” Schlafly wrote for the Christian Post. “But Americans are rising up by the tens of thousands to stop Common Core, which is the current attempt to compel all U.S. children to be taught the same material and not other things parents might think important.”

Common Core is a set of K-12 math and English standards that were adopted by 45 states. Developed by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, the standards are backed by the Obama administration.

Schlafly pointed out that the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the 1970 General Education Provisions Act and the 1979 law establishing the U.S. Department of Education all prohibit a national curriculum.

Hamstrung by the letter of the law, Schlafly said that President Barack Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan are using Common Core to go around that.

“Despite all those emphatic words, Obama’s Department of Education, headed by an alumnus of the Chicago Democratic machine and other leftists, seeks to mold the minds of all our children into supporters of big government,” she wrote. “Their vehicle to accomplish this is Common Core, which is artfully designed to impose de facto national uniformity while complying with all explicit federal prohibitions.”

“The mechanism of control is the tests all students must take, which will be written by the people who created Common Core,” Schlafly continued. “If students haven’t studied a curriculum “aligned” with Common Core, they will have a hard time passing the tests required for a high school diploma and entry into college.”

She added that once the standards are adopted, they can’t be changed at the state level and that two national groups, the NGA and CCSO have ownership of the standards.

Via: The Blaze

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When will America end cash-for-visas racket?

by Michelle Malkin
Creators SyndicateCopyright 2014

This may be the first and last time I ever write these words: America, follow Canada.
Our neighbors to the north finally have wised up to the international cash-for-visas scam. Last week, the country ended its foreign investor program that put residency up for sale to the highest bidder. We should have done the same a long time ago.

Canada’s Immigrant Investor Program granted permanent residency to wealthy foreigners who forked over 800,000 Canadian dollars for a five-year, zero-interest loan to one of the country’s provinces. The scheme turned out to be a magnet for tens of thousands of millionaires from Hong Kong and China. But as the Canadian Ministry of Finance concluded in its annual budget report this year, the program “undervalued Canadian permanent residence” and showed “little evidence that immigrant investors as a class are maintaining ties to Canada or making a positive economic contribution to the country.”

In several provinces, the foreign investor racket was riddled from top to bottom with fraud. Whistleblowers in the Prince Edward Island immigration office exposed rampant bribery among bureaucrats and consultants, who helped their clients jump the queue. The government failed to monitor immigrant investors or verify the promised economic benefits of the “investments.” The program didn’t just fast-track supposed business people with dubious business backgrounds, but also their entire extended families, who walled themselves in segregated neighborhoods.

Ads in Dubai bragged that investors didn’t even need to live in the country to take advantage of the citizenship-for-sale deal — and that their dependents could avail themselves of full health care and education benefits.

Fifteen years ago, an independent auditor hired by the Canadian government warned that he had “found that in many cases there was no investment at all or that the amount of that investment was grossly inflated.” The auditor nailed the expedient commodification of citizenship: “Canadians gave up something of real value — a visa or passport — and received very little in return.” He concluded: “A lot of people made a lot of money, mostly lawyers and immigration consultants who set up these bogus investments. It’s a massive sham. The middlemen made hundreds of millions of dollars.”

I’ve been issuing the very same warnings about America’s EB-5 immigrant investor visa program, created under an obscure section of the 1990 Immigration Act, for more than a decade. The details of the U.S. program vary, but the facade is the same: trading residency on the cheap for the shady promise of economic development. Just as in Canada, the U.S. racket’s alleged economic benefits are largely hype.

Via: Michelle Malkin

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The Ten Most Abusive Obama Executive Actions

President Obama has made liberal use of "executive action" throughout his presidency, and pledged to make even more use of executive action in this year's State of the Union speech. He seems to think that because Republicans don't want to implement his agenda, he can go around Congress.

The Heritage Foundation is out with a new report on President Obama's executive actions, titled "An Executive Unbound," finding that "abusive, unlawful, even potentially unconstitutional unilateral action has been a hallmark of the Obama Administration." They've also compiled a list of the top ten abusive executive actions taken by the President.

1. Amending Obamacare’s employer mandate, providing an unauthorized subsidy to congressional staff, and encouraging state insurance commissioners not to enforce certain requirements.
2 Inventing labor law “exemptions” in violation of the WARN Act so that workers would not receive notice of impending layoffs days before the 2012 election.
3. Waiving the mandatory work requirement under the 1996 comprehensive welfare reform law, which required able-bodied adults to work, prepare for work, or look for work in order to receive benefits under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program.
4. Ignoring a statutory deadline and refusing to consider an application related to nuclear waste storage at Yucca Mountain, which activists sought to block for years.
5. Circumventing the Senate’s duty to provide advice and consent on appointments and instead making “recess” appointments in violation of Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution when the Senate was actually in session.
6. Deciding not to defend the constitutionality of the federal definition of marriage in court.
7. Implementing Common Core national standards through strings-attached waivers from the No Child Left Behind Act.
8. Intimidating Florida to stop its voter roll cleanup, which included removing ineligible voters such as noncitizens, before the 2012 election.
9. Imposing the DREAM Act by executive fiat under the guise of “prosecutorial discretion.”
10. Refusing to enforce federal drug laws in states that have legalized marijuana.

Heritage's entire report is an excellent read - and these are ten of the most egregious actions of the Obama Administration.

Via: Townhall

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The Hotline's Senate Race Rankings: Republicans in Command

The 2014 Senate landscape continues to look challenging for Democrats. Republicans can take back the chamber after eight years of Democratic control with a net gain of six seats, and the seven seats most likely to flip are held by Democrats in states President Obama lost in 2012.

The most important change since we looked at the Senate map three months ago is the glut of outside spending, particularly against Democratic incumbents in the majority-making seats of North Carolina, Louisiana, and Alaska. The nonprofit, conservative group Americans for Prosperity has dumped tens of millions into those states, beating up incumbents who now have--at best--50/50 chances of retaining their seats.

Republicans are well positioned to win a Senate majority in 2014. A favorable map, combined with a positive national environment driven by disapproval of the health care law, have put Democrats on the defensive.

The rankings are best considered in tiers. The first two seats are very likely to flip, while in seats 3 and 4 Republicans are favored to take over. In seats 5 through 7, Democratic incumbents in red states are deeply vulnerable, and if Republicans win the top four, they need only two of the three seats in this tier to control the Senate.

Seats 8 to 12 are also close to 50/50 races. Colorado debuts in this tier after the top recruit, Rep. Cory Gardner, decided to run. In seats 13 to 15, the Democratic incumbent is likely to retain control of the seat, although the races bear watching--and Republicans don't need seats 13 to 15 to wrestle control of the majority.

Via: National Journal

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